Dark day in democracy still fresh in minds
On the 24th anniversary of the Feb. 28 post-modern coup, Turkey continues to heal the wounds inflicted when its democracy and society were targeted in a tragic stunt that still haunts the public’s memory and was predicted by its perpetrators to last ‘1,00
“I WAS the mayor of Istanbul during the Feb. 28 era. I was thrown into jail for reading a poem, and my political career was targeted. I am now serving as the first democratically elected president of Turkey. I am serving my nation with pride, despite every move to hinder it. A coup is a crime against humanity. I lived through the Feb. 28 coup. I am aware of its impact.”
Those were the words uttered by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan early yesterday on the 24th anniversary of the “post-modern coup,” which caused such deep damage to Turkey’s democracy that its legacy is still embedded in the minds of the Turkish people.
Feb. 28, 1997, was a turning point in the history of the young republic.
The Turkish military, which considered even the slightest disruption a “legitimate” attempt to harm the country’s security and secular state structure, dealt one of the heaviest blows the Turkish democracy has ever experienced on that day.
The Turkish government at the time was run by a coalition led by then-Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan’s Welfare Party (RP), but the military was apprehensive about the premier due to his party’s conservative leanings, alleging that the RP’s supposed “Islamist” agenda was problematic.
Erbakan’s visit to Libya, his promotion of unity between members of the Developing-8 (D-8) bloc of nations and his decision to host religious figures for a Ramadan iftar dinner were among the reasons that motivated the military to increase pressure on the leader, accusing the prime minister of engaging in “reactionary activities.”
The military expressed its dissatisfaction on Feb. 4 by holding a “military parade,” which included tanks, in the streets of Ankara’s Sincan district.
Following the parade, then-Deputy Chief of General Staff Çevik Bir said the event had intended to “stabilize democracy.”
Sincan Mayor and RP member Bekir Yıldız was dismissed from his post and arrested – along with nine others – after being accused by military authorities of “inciting” the public.
1997 Turkey’s National Security Council (MGK) held an emergency meeting that lasted almost nine hours, the longest-ever single session in the MGK’s history.
The meeting produced what would come to be known as the “February 28 Memorandum,” which contained a list of resolutions by the Turkish military taken in response to what it deemed “rising Islamist ideology.”
The memorandum’s main premises were to shut down the Islamic education-based imam hatip schools and prevent religious activities under the pretext of separating religion from the state.
However, the biggest outcome of the legislature was probably the banning of women wearing headscarves from entering any public buildings, including schools and universities. This ban caused millions of young women to either give up their education or suffer while trying to receive a proper one. Female teachers were also dismissed from their jobs if they refused to remove their headscarves and the abhorred practice of “persuasion rooms” was launched in universities, where headscarf-wearing students would be “persuaded” to remove their headscarves amid threats of expulsion from the school. Women wearing headscarves were also not permitted to work.
The military then forced Erbakan to sign a slew of decrees, including the ban on headscarves, the shutting down of schools that provided Quranic education and the implementation of measures aimed at giving the military control over the independent media.
On June 18, 1997 the military went even further, forcing Erbakan’s entire government to resign, leaving the premiership in Deputy Prime Minister Tansu Çiller’s hands. Çiller was a leading member of Turkey’s True Path Party (DYP), which was a component of the governing coalition that also included Erbakan’s RP.
Then-President Süleyman Demirel, who was barred from having any political affiliation according to the laws back then, later asked Mesut Yılmaz, leader of the right-wing liberal Motherland Party (ANAP), to make up a new government.
In what has since been termed Turkey’s “post-modern” coup, a new government was unveiled, which took the reins of power from Erbakan. The new government included ANAP, the Democratic Left Party (DSP) and the Democrat Turkey Party (DTP).
DSP leader Bülent Ecevit became the deputy prime minister in the new administration, which was then used to enforce the MGK’s orders.
Private schools and foundations with alleged links to religious or conservative groups were shut, while devout Muslims were largely marginalized from public institutions – including government agencies, state universities, the civil service, the judiciary and the military.
Erbakan’s Welfare Party was abolished based on a decision issued by Turkey’s Constitutional Court, while several politicians – including Erbakan, Şevket Kazan, Ahmet Tekdal, Şevki Yılmaz, Hasan Hüseyin Ceylan and İbrahim Halil Çelik – were banned from participating in politics for five years.
One of the masterminds of the Feb. 28 coup, Turkish Military’s then-Land Forces Commander Hüseyin Kıvrıkoğlu, who would later become head of Turkish Chief of Staff, once said that “Feb. 28 will last 1,000 years,” but he was utterly wrong in his wishful thinking.
Only five years later, the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) chaired by Erdoğan was chosen by the Turkish public in democratic elections, and the party has never lost an election since 2002. The Erdoğan-led party has since implemented many reforms to prevent the military from intervening in Turkish democracy and politics.
After the military influence over the Turkish judiciary and politics was gradually eliminated, the perpetrators of the Feb. 28 post-modern coup were brought to justice.
COUP PLOTTERS PUNISHED
In a landmark decision in 2018, a Turkish
court sentenced 21 high-level officials to life in prison for their roles in the 1997 coup.
The officials included former military chief İsmail Hakkı Karadayı; his deputy, Çevik Bir; former First Army Commander Çetin Doğan; former MGK Secretary-General Ilhan Kılıç; former Gendarmerie Commander Fevzi Türkeri; former Land Forces Commander Hikmet Köksal and former Secretary-General of the General Staff Erol Özkasnak.
Sixty-eight other suspects in the case were acquitted.
The court blamed Karadayı and Bir for “masterminding” the coup.
Many others who played roles in the coup have avoided arrest – due to old age or health problems – but have nevertheless been barred from leaving the country.
“Mr. Erbakan and I began receiving messages like ‘troops are rising up ’ from thenPresident Süleyman Demirel. These threats were so overwhelming and serious that my family was being targeted. I told them to do whatever they would do and that I had my rope in my pocket,” former Prime Minister Çiller said in an interview with Anadolu Agency (AA) on Sunday, underlining that she was undeterred by the coup plotters, referring to capital punishment, which was still in force back then and was carried out by hanging.
Çiller described the media outlets of the era as a “cartel” and said that the business circles, disturbed by Turkey’s ascension into the customs union, united against her.
The former prime minister also said that RP’s success in local elections created an atmosphere of unease.
“RP wasn’t wanted in the government; a strategy was laid out to prevent its presence in a governing coalition. All of the pressure inflicted on us was aimed at making us form a coalition with ANAP. I had already observed how coups divided the center-right of the political spectrum, so I wanted to unite the right. Even though we had more deputies, we granted the premiership to the ANAP and formed a minority government,” she said, further adding that it was impossible to merge the two parties’ voter bases.
“It was clear that it was very hard to unite the two right-wing parties. As it proved unfeasible, we formed a coalition with RP,” she said, detailing the process that would later lead to the forcible sacking of Erbakan.
Saying that they received threats of a military uprising, she added that the allegations that the RP supports anti-secular actions were floated.
Çiller also said that the then-ambassador of Iran to Ankara, who made an antisecular speech during an event organized by the RP to protest Israel’s illegal occupation
of Jerusalem and Palestinian territories, was expelled by the Turkish government, but anti-RP spheres continued their claims against RP.
The former prime minister also said that Erbakan wanted to reconcile with the military in order to continue his government’s service to the nation.
“The Turkish military is the apple of my eye,” she said, adding that rejecting the military intervention into democracy is crucial nevertheless.
Çiller also detailed her dialogue with Erbakan after the tanks paraded in Ankara’s Sincan, which was a clear warning to the government by the military.
“My advice to Erbakan was to sack the chief of staff and other high-ranking members of the military, but he said that the president would not approve this. I told him that this was a historic duty, but he said that a ruling to shut RP down would come later. We managed to grow the Turkish economy by 8%t, so the economy was on the right track, and we were working in harmony with RP,” she said, emphasizing that the otherwise functioning coalition was effectively terminated by the military’s intervention.
“The most conservative segment of society was producing democratic initiatives. The atmosphere would later lead to a prominent reconciliation between opposite sides of the nation, but that was averted by this coup,” she added.
Çiller said that Feb. 28 also sent Turkey down a path toward an economic crisis.
“The banks that went bankrupt after Feb. 28 led Turkey into a big crisis. The cost of this coup was $291 billion. With that amount of money, we could largely solve unemployment,” she said.
Çiller concluded by saying that the AK Party, which has ruled the country since 2002 with consecutive election victories, has ended the era of coups. “The nation has given AK Party a chance, and it has ended the era of coups and tutelage. Now, our duty is to unite in democracy,” she said.
The U.S. European Command (EUCOM) is one of the 11 units the United States possesses all over the world. Thanks to its efforts to dismember Iraq and Syria, we in Turkey know the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) is responsible for the wars in the Middle East, Africa and Central Asia and parts of South Asia.
It created several so-called autonomous cantons in northern Syria and right now is busy adding a new military base to protect those entities within a stone’s throw from Turkey on its southern border.
Headquartered in Stuttgart, Germany, EUCOM is “responsible” for 51 countries and territories in Europe, Russia, Greenland and Israel. EUCOM is now trying to build a huge military presence within eyeshot on the other end of Turkish borders.
I will try to summarize for its commander, the four-star U.S. Air Force Gen. Tod D. Wolters, who also serves as NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR), and how the site of his new base fell into Greek hands.
Wolters’ military facility is in Alexandroupoli
(Dedeağaç), where the TurkishMuslim population was once four times higher than all the Christians and Jews residing there.
I don’t mean “once upon a time.” We are talking about the results of the 1920 plebiscite done by former Greek Prime Minister Eleftherios Kyriakou Venizelos (the great-granddad of the sitting Greek Prime Minister Kyriakou Mitsotakis, who is named after him).
A WAY BACK
When the Ottoman Empire lost those countries to the Allied Powers at the end of World War I, signing the 1919 Treaty of
Neuilly, the victors decided to ask the local people which country they’d like to be attached to; Venizelos hadn’t waited idly but tried to secure favorable results with a major ethnic cleansing and population moving operation.
Yet the people voted for the French mandate. The Ottoman government in Istanbul preferred French rule rather than seeing Greece gobble up another piece of the dying empire. However, the local people created resistance groups and kept autonomous administrative pockets recognized by the French military commander and provisional governor.
Due to the internal discord among the European powers, the French didn’t want to turn Western Thrace over to Greece, while the British wanted to see Greeks rather than the French and the Italians. The future of the area could not be decided in a timely manner, and the Turks, expelling the Greek armies placed in İzmir by the British, slowly moved toward Western Thrace.
However, the national forces, weary of wars since the early days of World War I, seemed content with securing two former capitals of the empire, Istanbul and Edirne, and didn’t go any further. Yet, the local resistance survived: The Muslim people of the area did not disarm their underground forces.
Only Italy, rejecting the agreement that would turn the Aegean Islands over to Greece and leave Western Thrace to Venizelos (who grabbed the power back after the embarrassing defeat in Anatolia firing King Constantine a second time) tried to side with the new Turkish republic, but it was not enough.
The Muslim resistance in the area was not powerful enough; the leaders of the young Turkish state miscalculated the British intentions that it could restart the war if a peace agreement were not signed in Lausanne. Venizelos easily crushed the Muslim resistance, but the community still survived.
If Wolters is not busy enough with the welcoming committees’ banquets in Alexandroupoli celebrating new U.S. weapons agreements with Greece and would like to listen to those demonstrators protesting, he’d hear that people are not only protesting the weapons EUCOM is amassing in Thrace, but they also are opposing Greek dominance in the area. Those are the great children of the resistance against the Greek occupation of their lands.
Encyclopedias mention only Greek “Megali Idea” to claim and recreate the Byzantine Empire in Istanbul and the Black Sea and the Aegean Sea regions of Anatolia. But Wolters should also learn about the irredenta that still exists in the hearts and minds of the Muslim people of Western Thrace. The general’s base surrounding Turkey from the Western borders may not have the consent of real landowners.